There has been a growing proliferation of high-speed input/output interface standards (i.e., agreed principles and protocols) directed towards various applications within the electronics industry. These standards generally address chip-to-chip interfaces, board-to-board interfaces, and box-to-box interfaces for a wide range of emerging applications, such as data packet processing, data bus bridges, and high-speed memory interfacing, to name but a few.
Certain programmable devices (or chips), such as programmable logic devices (e.g., including complex programmable logic devices and field programmable gate arrays) can potentially handle a wide range of input/output interface standards because of their flexible programmable circuitry. Specifically, the core logic of the programmable device may be programmed to accommodate the desired input/output standards by performing the necessary logic.
A drawback of programmable devices is that their input/output performance is generally limited due to the nature of the flexible, programmable circuitry. For example, a signal propagating through a programmable device's general programmable circuitry will typically take longer than through circuitry (e.g., input/output circuitry) specifically designed for the desired function or application. Consequently, programmable devices are more suited to medium-frequency logic and interface applications than the emerging high-speed input/output interface applications.
A drawback of devices that have fixed-functions or non-scalable interfaces (e.g., a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) interface) is that they are typically limited to the set of input/output standards that the circuitry was specifically designed (i.e., hard-wired) to accommodate. For example, a device may have a specific circuit designed for each type of input/output interface standard that the device supports. A drawback of this approach is that it becomes difficult to select which combination of specific circuits should be incorporated into the device due to the large number of existing standards and the rapid pace at which they continue to emerge and evolve. As a result, there is a need for systems and methods to address the high-speed input/output interface for devices.